


the river sings deep

by scrhaiser



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:58:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scrhaiser/pseuds/scrhaiser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fear, she learned, her fingers cramping as she dug a shallow hole with her hands, is a far better motivator than adrenaline.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Laurel is not fond of the memory of her first kill. It had been a rainy evening, and puddles had leaked into her sneakers as she dragged the body to the river. Drying blood had stained her fingers and her shirt, and her heart had thumped in rapid beats again her chest. She had to swim into the Mississippi with the body before it would float away and then swim, gasping and sobbing, back to shore.

Fear, she learned, her fingers cramping as she dug a shallow hole with her hands, was a far better motivator than adrenaline.

That was the first and only time she ever had to burn her clothes to get rid of the evidence. Laurel Castillo does not like to make the same mistakes twice.

 

*

 

The night Brandon Smith grabs Jamie Simon by her shoulders and pushes her onto a bed is the night Laurel realizes she has a pattern.

She's rummaging around Brandon's left kidney when the revelation comes and the thought alone is enough to send her heart back into its rabbit beat of her first few kills- patterns get people caught, patterns breed recklessness. Laurel has an affinity for water, it seems, and this terrifies her. The entire ride out to Jamie Simone's grandparents' farm, Laurel can't stop clenching her fingers against the steering wheel and doesn't stop thinking about sirens until Jamie takes the shovel from her, coldly calm, and finishes piling dirt on Brandon.

"What are you going to do with that?" Jamie asks her on the ride back home, pointing to the saran-wrapped liver sitting between them.

Laurel shrugs as she pulls into Jamie's driveway. "I'll get rid of it."

Jamie pauses in the half space between the car and the car door, stares at Laurel with blue eyes that know too much. Laurel- she hadn't known Jamie's name until this party. They're not friends, and if even if they were, she wouldn't trust her. "You're good at this," Jamie says, like this is something that Laurel does because she can.

Laurel shrugs again.

Jamie looks up- at the stars, the black night, the sliver of a moon dangling in the sky. "There's this guy," she starts, and Laurel knows Jamie won't wake up in the morning scrubbing at her fingernails and dashing to inform the police.

Laurel drives off two minutes later; she sees Jamie watch her leave.

Laurel drives for hours, miles turning to dust under her tires. Her car finally runs out of gas on an old stone bridge just as the sun is just beginning to creep over the horizon.

She gets out, Brandon's liver cradled in her hands.

She walks to the edge of the bridge and looks down. Underneath runs a river, and even at this hour she can see it runs fast and deep, cold water wearing a groove deep into the skin of the earth.

Laurel unwraps Brandon Smith's liver, holds it out it offering, and watches the water swallow it whole.

Her hunger is satisfied; her pattern broken- livers decompose more easily than whole bodies.

She returns to her car, quite content until she looks in the backseat at her backpack and realizes she has the final draft of her AP Euro paper due in two hours.

*

Laurel can't hold back the gasps that well up in her throat as he stabs Connor and again and again, merciless and terrifying and more of a monster than she's ever seen in the mirror. Connor jerks at each pen thrust and she can do nothing but cover her mouth with her hands and be grateful she's not the one lying on that bed. She sees something of herself in Connor's loud exhales and frightened deer gaze after the client gets off him, smiling jovially; but she sees more of herself in the client and his bloodstains and his stuffed trophies. They are kin, the two of them, hunters to the marrow of their bones. Their hearts sing for blood. Laurel used to share Connor's fear (still does sometimes) but now she is stronger than that: smarter than that. Better than that.

That is what Laurel tells herself until, unbidden, comes the thought that Connor looked ready to drink down the man's blood like hot wine before the stabbing started.

After that incident, she watches Connor with eagle eyes- because he's shaken, but recovers remarkably well. Because he doesn't do boyfriends. Because his hands are dark with the sin he carves and Laurel has lived long enough to know the signs.

But mostly, Laurel watches Connor Walsh (the line of his back as he bends to pick up a paper, the soft hollows under his jaw, the way he watches Wes and Michaela, the way he completely dismisses _her_ ) she watches him because she doesn't like him, but she doesn't want to cut him open and gift his river to the water, either. It's a novel feeling, and she doesn't know if she likes it.

*

She's scouting the woods several towns over when she has her first encounter with someone like her. She nearly trips over them, in fact. They sit on a tree stump, motionless and staring. A wilting purple flower is tucked behind one ear. Their clothes are brown and cracked, worn down by the cruel forces of nature. "Sorry," she says, once she's regained her footing. "I didn't see you there."

They look up at her with yellow eyes, the irises spilling over into the whites like blood, and she realizes she may have cause to fear. She takes a step back. But they merely nod slowly at her. "Young one," they say slowly. They reach up and remove their hat. "You smell like souls."

"Oh," she says, and considers running.

They return their hat to their head. "Forth with care and good fate," they say, and return to staring at some distant horizon.

Laurel does not return to that wood. Not out of fear, she thinks, but rather something like respect.

*

Aiden remembers Connor very vividly. Very vividly, then gray fuzzy space, then very vividly again. He drives down to see Michaela and can't stop remembering Connor- Connor's eager hands, Connor's fast grin and wild eyes, Connor's mouth catching Aiden's breath in a janitor's closet.

He remembers fading, his mind filling with a grey haze that still terrifies him.

He nearly drowned when he was five - unable to swim -but his sister dragged him to the surface and hit his back until he had coughed all the water out.

That time- the last time - Connor below him, his tie and jacket gone, his eyes so, so dark-

The next time, he brushed Connor off. Connor had flashed a smile at him and moved away, unconcerned. For three weeks after that, they didn't speak, and that's something Aiden has never regretted.

*

"You," Michaela snarls, pushing her unconscious victim down and away and turning to face Laurel head on. She spies the axe, her red eyes snapping to the gore covered head with uncanny quickness.

Laurel brings the axe up in front of her. Not everyone who travels the roads in their dark underworld is friendly. Michaela licks blood off her lips and spits at Laurel's face. "I have no mercy for the likes of you."

Laurel blinks quickly, once, twice, and wipes away little dots of blood on her face with her sleeve. "Don't get DNA on me," she says, far calmer than she feels. "I'm not going to go to prison for cannibalism."

Michaela freaks out, lunges for Laurel, claw-like naisl reaching for Laurel's face, crackling Taser in one hand, a mouth full of sharp teeth seeking her neck. Laurel bats her away with the axe and darts away.

Michaela rubs her bruised cheeks and lunges a second time, only to feint and grab the axe, yanking it away from her. Smart, because Laurel is now weaponless and more interested in protecting the liver tucked in her front coat pocket than tangling with - whatever Michaela is, with her teeth and nails like claws, her elegant posture and her light feet, but mostly - the black feathers that peek out from her disheveled hair, shining under the dim streetlight.

Her enemy freezes, staring at the blade of the old axe. She sniffs delicately and scrunches her nose. She stares at Laurel with open wonder and disgust and takes a half step forward. "Is this… someone's frontal lobe?"

"Hippocampus, actually." The joke falls short.

Michaela's gaze runs up and down Laurel, over her stained coat, the odd bulge the liver creates in her pocket, her skirt and her scuffed boots. She seems to pick out all the littler things- the Target skirt, the scrape on Laurel's lower thigh where tonight's prey fought too much, the blood spray across her cheek that Laurel (mostly) succeeded in wiping away.

Michaela's eyes keep darting to the pocket where she put the liver. Laurel shifts uncomfortably.

Michaela grins, wild eyed - though the red is fading - and triumphant. "Rough night," she asks. The panic is still fading from her voice.

"Messy."

Michaela holds out the axe to her, face split wide in a genuine blood-soaked smile. They walk lonely paths - kin are hard to find, and more so and those that don't eat their fellow. "Happy hunting."

As Laurel continues heading toward the lake, leaving the stench of electricity behind, Michaela reaches out for her victim once more.

 

*

 

Is everyone she knows secretly a serial killer?

When she notices that Asher never uses railings while walking down stairs and one night she tracks him to a small club whose name is written in a language she's never seen before and has lots of convenient dumpsters, she starts to think she might be right.

 

*

 

Except Connor. He may have killed before (she can't be sure) but all he does now is feed, sucking away minutes and days and months from attractive young men.

(Pun intended, of course).

 

*

 

And except Wes, of course. Because Wes is a real life puppy with a trophy and a heart of gold.

(She might adore him, a little bit).

 

*

 

Tonight is a bad night for hunting - the moon hangs full and heavy in the dark sky, casting soft trembling reflections on the lake.

Off goes her coat, folded a neat pile on a rock, then her boots, her socks. She rolls up her pants and walks into the lake. First she washes the axe, lazily cutting it through the water and creating little waves that push cold water against her calves. She'll have to wash the lake water out later, but, for now, she lets her skirt get wet.

She rests the axe against a rock.

She walks in, her numb feet gripping slippery stones, until the water comes up to her thighs. She takes a sideways stance and throws the liver as hard as she can. It enters the lake with a splash but bobs back to the surface and floats, tugged along by an unseen string.

In between one blink and the next, it sinks.

Laurel walks out of the lake and uses the unbloodied parts of her coat to dry her legs before she puts on her socks, ties her coat around a rock, and heaves it into the lake. Pollution, but necessary.

 

*

 

Asher howls.

Laurel runs inside, bursts through the doors, and sees Asher leaning against the sofa where Laurel fell asleep last night on top of a pile of textbooks. He stands on one leg, clutching the other with his free hand. Michaela is next to him, peeking up from behind the couch; her back to Laurel. Connor is startled, unmoving, gripping the armchair on which he sits with white-knuckled hands.

And on the living room carpet stands Wes in all his noble glory, a stake shining silver in one hand and a gun breathing justice in the other.

Michaela has whirled around. "Laurel!" she and Wes say at the same time, in the same relieved tone. "He's-" Michaela continues, then trails off.

Laurel doesn't need to be told Wes is a hunter: the silver stake speaks volumes.

He stares at her and swallows. His eyes are wide; the gun steady. Asher's hisses fill the silence and steam rises from his thigh. Iron bullets: Wes is no amateur.

Laurel takes a slow step forward but no gunshot comes.

"You too," Wes says flatly, but still he does not shoot.

Laurel takes another step forward. "Me too what?" she asks, trying to find some way to diffuse the situation, but it's too late. Michaela's and Laurel's own hesitation have already given her away. He is Daniel in a den of lions, and the lions are sharp-toothed indeed.

"There are four of us." Connor looks up at Wes to speak. The gun shifts. "There is one of you." He looks up calmly at the gun aimed between his eyes. "You can't win."

Michaela too has gained confidence from Laurel's entrance. She stands and delivers her sentence with flashing teeth: "Leave, Gibbins, or there won't be enough of you left to mop pff the floor."

Wes looks at Laurel again, then to Connor and Michaela. "There are three of you worth anything right now," he says, licking his lips, "and I've got more bullets than that."

Michaela shrugs. "That doesn't mean anything. I'm faster than you, hunter."

Wes motions to Connor with the stake. "Are you fast enough to stop an iron bullet through his brain?" Because I've never met something that could recover from that."

Michaela makes an aborted shrug; Connor goes tightlipped and tense, his hands gripping the leather chair so tightly he might rip it. "We can't always get everything we want. Besides, he's not even really like us." Laurel would believe her clever little lies if it weren't for Michael's fingers drifting towards her purse on the couch - she keeps her taser there.

"Yeah," Wes says, shifting his aim to them, but angling the sharp end of the stake towards Connor. "You're not like him."

Asher huffs. "You're an idiot if you think we're not all exactly the same." Already, the steam from his leg has lessened and he stands straighter.

"Really," Wes asks calmly. "He hasn't killed anyone since I've met him and I certainly can't say the same of you."

"You're wrong," Connor says, hoarsely and in the moment that Wes stares at him with wide eyes Michaela's hand darts into her purse and steals out her taser before hiding it behind her back. Connor shuts his eyes tightly. He's one of the guilty ones, then. He fears his own true nature. "You're wrong," he repeats. Wes shifts his gun back to Connor's forehead, only inches away. "It was-" Connor starts, tears leaking out of his eyes. "Seven weeks ago, when we-"

Laurel doesn't notice that Michaela is launching herself at Wes until she's halfway over the couch and it's too late. "Stop!" Laurel screams at them, at all of them. "Stop!"

And everyone does. Stop. Freeze.

Wes steps back from Connor. Michaela is frozen, standing on the coffee table. But her taser is no longer crackling. She is straining to move forward. Connor opens his eyes. "Don't move," Laurel says breathlessly - oh god what is this she's never been able to do something like this before all she's ever done is give up the liver to the water and she's never been able to - to compel people before - oh god, oh god -

Michaela is the first to fall. She crumples like a rag doll onto the floor. Papers fly everywhere. Across the room, Wes's eyes meet hers, but he's just as dumbfounded as she is.

Not two seconds later, Connor falls back against the chair, a black dart stuck deep into his neck.

She turns toward the kitchen. "Yeah," Sam says, sighting down the gun and stepping into the living room, every muscle in his body smooth and tense as a cat's before a kill. "Don't move."

Laurel feels the sting, then falls.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Except, of course, she needs a monster to catch a monster and aren't they all monsters here.

"Wake up!" Michaela is shaking her frantically. "Damn it Laurel, wake up!" Waves of dizziness push her back and forth, a little sailboat lost on the waves.

"Stop it," Connor hisses, from somewhere. "Just shut up- he's going to hear you!"

"I don't give a shit," Michaela bites back. "He's going to kill us anyway I really don't think it fucking matters if we're conscious."

"What." Laurel says. "What." She remembers - a gun? a - hunter, Mr. Keating, with a gun, Wes watching her fall, darkness swallowing her down.

Michaela grabs her shoulders and pulls her upright. "What are we going to do?" she asks sharply, fingers digging into her arms. "What's your plan?"

"God," Asher snarls cruelly - he's off in the corner, "I told you, she knows just as much as the rest of you - my father - "

"The darts," Laurel whispers, managing to make her head straight. "What was in the darts?"

They all fall silent. "What," Asher finally says.

Laurel gently unlatches Michaela and sits up. "The darts. Some sort of sedative but - what else?" Her head is clearing much quicker now and God, it's cold down here.

Connor speaks. "Mountain ash." They all turn to look at him, huddled in a corner, one eye purpling blue. He ticks off his fingers. "Mountain ash, wolfsbane, silver and iron dust, and white lily. Cinnamon too, I think."

"How do you know that?" Asher asks with narrowed eyes. He looks paler than he should in the light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling. Washed out.

Connor shrugs.

"Okay," Laurel says, even as the clues come together. "Okay. We're in their basement, right?" She raps the cold metal walls- solid iron. A cage. "So Professor Keating just happens to have a meat locker or…" she swallows, because she can understand Sam and she can understand Wes but Annalise; Annalise on top of it all is just too much. "… or she's one of them too."

Connor laughs, a crowing sound tinged with madness. "Of course she is. Hunters work in pairs, always." He points upward. "Camera, by the way. Probably a microphone too."

"We're going to assume that, then. All three of them are our enemies and so is anyone who looks dangerous. When the door opens we attack." This is the best she has, a stupid plan that will get someone killed even though they're all going to die anyway.

Connor laughs again. "Not going to work." He points to a grate in the corner of the ceiling. "They'll gas us if they have to or if we take out the camera."

Asher leans forward, his face pale and sweaty. "How do you know so much, Walsh?" he asks. A bandage has been wrapped around his leg, but if the bullet hasn't been removed it'll hurt more than it'll help.

Connor just shrugs again.

"Michaela, Michaela," Laurel soothes, desperately trying to gain some control of the situation, but her sometimes-friend won't stop rocking back and forth. "Michaela, you need to calm down. We're going to go to the door and wait for it to open, and then you and I will- "

"There's no point!" Connor snarls suddenly from his corner. Laurel watches Asher watch him. "There's no fucking point - Sam's obviously an experienced hunter - none of you stand a chance. He took you guys down like that," he snaps his fingers, "He just didn't want to get blood all over his living room."

"And are you going to just roll over and die?" Michaela suddenly shrieks. Laurel has to grab her arm to keep her from flying across the room.

Everyone falls silent, staring across at each other wide eyes and crooked mouths. "No," Asher finally says with a grim smile. "He's going to watch you two die." His lips twist meanly. "Connor, what family are you from?" he asks.

The puzzle that is Connor Walsh finally clicks into place and Laurel's sedative addled mind finally understands. Michaela does too, evidently, because she says "Fuck," and starts crying into Laurel's shoulder.

Asher digs deeper when Connor does not respond. "Must have thrown you out as soon as they realized what you were- or wait. Did you tell them?" he crows. "I bet you did, didn't you? You ran to your mommy and daddy and though they might make an exception for you."

Connor ignores Asher, pressing his cheek against the metal wall and closing his eyes.

Laurel watches him, pulling Michaela closer.

 

*

 

Connor is right. They do gas them.

 

*

 

"How many?" Bonnie asks, her hair impeccable, her gaze far more unflinching and unrelenting than a stone wall. She doesn't appear to be armed, but Laurel knows better than to judge by appearances.

After all, she does look in the mirror every morning.

"How many?" Bonnie demands again, tapping her nails against the table. Silver and iron cuffs hold Laurel to the steel chair bolted to the floor and it's more than enough to keep her down.

"Seven," Laurel says.

Bonnie catches the lie easily. "Don't lie to me, Castillo. You're not very good at it." She opens a drawer and no - that's definitely not a letter opener.

"Twelve," Laurel says.

"How old where you when you started?"

"Fourteen." That, at least, is the truth.

"Most recent?"

"Two weeks ago, Sunday night."

Bonnie nods, walking slowly around Laurel before stabbing the silver knife into the table with such sudden force the wooden table splits on one end. Laurel flinches violently. Bonnie yanks out the knife and leans against the table. "Let's start again," she says. Bonnie is very good at what she does, Laurel manages to think through the pounding of her heart. She's shaking all over and bile rises in her throat. Bonnie starts pulling answers like teeth, but at least with teeth she's given anesthesia instead of a slight, unyielding woman with a voice like a whip.

"How many humans have you killed?"

"Twenty-seven."

"How many were hunters?"

"One."

"How many others?"

"Two."

"How old were you?"

"Fourteen."

"Most recent kill?"

"Last Thursday."

"Family?"

"I'm the only one," she spits out like a bullet, just like the rest of her answers, praying Bonnie won't catch this one, not this one.

Bonnie smiles. Laurel looks down. "Much better. Now, about the rest of them…"

"Why us?" Laurel bites out, braced for a blow. "Surely at least one of you knew at looked at least one of us and did the math." They're a law firm of hunters, for god's sake.

"That's an excellent question." Bonnie says calmly as she leans against the table. "And unfortunately, I'm the one asking the questions. Let's start with Connor…"

 

*

 

Frank Delfino owes a great many debts. He owes Bonnie for that one time last February when his car wouldn't start and she gave him a ride. He owes Ken a new basketball. He owes his brother dinner. He owes his father a knife. He owes his mother a visit.

But nothing will ever compare to what he owes Annalise Keating.

[his soul is most precious possession, is it not?]

 

*

 

Laurel suspects she learns from Bonnie concerning her fellow classmates than Bonnie does from her.

This is what she gathers: Connor's family is fabulously rich and fabulously good at slaughtering things that go bump in the night. Asher's family is also fabulously rich and is fabulously good at barely toeing the line. Michaela, like her, came from nowhere, from no one important in their dark underworld. They are easily dispensable. They should be killed.

Except, of course, there is already one dead girl on campus and Keating does not need two more.

Except, of course, Lila Stangard was nowhere near human and Keating thinks some other monster did it and she wants to smoke them out.

Except, of course, she needs a monster to catch a monster and aren't they all monsters here.

"This is what you're going to do," Annalise Keating tells the five of them. She is fire and she is ice; she is made of pure tempered steel; she is ruthless without threats. The small wiry woman who stands behind her is threat enough.

 

*

 

Except: for all their claws and teeth and feathers it's Wes, noble hunter boy Wes, who kills the killer.

Except: for all their legends and blood and power it's Sam with his hands around Rebecca's throat and Lila's blood on his hands.

(What a beautiful thing it is, Laurel thinks, that this irony should be so just)

 

*

 

"Burn the body," Wes says.

Laurel blinks at him. They all blink at him.

"Don't be ridiculous," Asher says. The moonlight casts a predatory angle to his face. "Why don't we each take a limb? Laurel, I presume you want the torso."

Laurel rolls her eyes at him, because this, this is her element: cloudy skies and bloody red moons, bodies of bad men in the woods, a just murder on her hands, a balancing of scales, a liver tucked in her hand. This is where she can stand her own skin. This moment is hers. Wes is experienced, but in all the wrong ways. Asher has the right experience, but too much arrogance. Connor is afraid. Michaela is terrified.

"This is what we're going to do," she commands, wondering if this is how Annalise Keating always feels.

****  
  



	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "How are the kids?" Connor asks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ngl this is kind of shit writing and i don't really know where i'm going with this plot but hey i've been sitting on this for like five months so

Laurel has never had a sharp tongue but her teeth more than make up for it.

Michaela is what Laurel might have been, were she faster and smarter. She could have been colder and taller, infallible and a queen, but Laurel now stands an alloy, stronger for her fractures. When Michaela broke, she shattered into a million suns, unable to pick up all her pieces. Laurel has already been tempered, and she would not wish Michaela's fate on anyone; preferring her quiet breakdown at midnight, second quarter of sophomore year honors chemistry, when she realized she was going to get a C no matter how hard she studied for the final.

Shooting star, indeed. Laurel loves her for it, a little bit.

Connor laughs; Michaela flinches; Laurel pulls her closer. They are crouched behind a dumpster. "We're going to be fine," she says quietly, even though Michaela's engagement ring is probably buried with the body and the police officer probably remembered them and their clues and DNA are spread far wide this blood-soaked night.

God, this is a mess, and not a tidy one she can dispose of in the old pine forest near her house, not one she can poke and prod until it tells her what she wants to know, and definitely not one she can bleed dry into a river. It had felt different, under the trees and the black sky. She had felt powerful then, sure-footed and straight-backed. Now, she stands on the edge of a knife.

Michaela sobs into Laurel's shoulder. Connor looks like he wants to follow her lead.

"It's going to be okay," she repeats. It's a silent vow, to protect them and herself, to make sure nothing stands in their path and they live to see each new morning.

Laurel Castillo has never had a sharp tongue or a quick wit, but her teeth more than make up for it.

 

* * *

 

(They don't tell Annalise; they can't tell Annalise. Laurel suspects Wes has anyway, despite knowing the danger it puts the remaining members of the Keating Five in. He owes them no loyalty, not with what he is and what they are. Fair game, the four of them. And as Connor tells her, hunter's circles are small and word of those who are spared passes quickly. The spared never last very long, he whispers to her. He tells her he is not afraid for himself, but for the rest of them.)

 

* * *

 

 

Wes calls her one night. "Laurel," he says, his voice hoarse and his words just this side of slurred, "can you come to my place? Please?"

She does. The door is unlocked when she arrives. "I don't know what to do," Wes says as she steps into his bedroom. He is sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed. There is an empty bottle at his feet.

Laurel sits down next to him. "Are you going to kill me?" he asks hoarsely.

"Don't be ridiculous," she tells him.

"But I could kill you. Isn't that - a threat?"

"Don't be ridiculous," she repeats, because the idea that Wes presents any sort of threat to her is ludicrous. Not when the playing field is level.

She gets him water and crackers; she helps him out of his shirt and pants; she puts him to bed. She stays with him until his breathing evens.

On her way out, she meets Rebecca coming up the stairs. The girl starts, a full body flinch when Laurel brushes against her on the small staircase. "You can't tell him," she says fiercely, angrily. "He doesn't know."

Laurel does not understand until she sees the glint of silver in Rebecca's hair and eyes. "Your secret is safe with me."

 

* * *

 

Connor Walsh is afraid of guns. It's very reasonable of him.

"It doesn't matter is she's off duty," he argues, "she's going to have her gun and I don't appreciate getting shot."

Enter Detective Lyla Bates: the 'she' in question, a forty-three year old woman with perfect, severe hair, the highest success rate in the region, five feet six inches of sharp wit and strong moral fiber, and the primary investigator in Sam's disappearance.

"You'll be fine," Laurel says, and Connor agrees in the end.

"I can do this," he says.

 

* * *

 

 

Laurel has never regretted a kill, and she's sure as hell not about to start now.

 

* * *

 

"I can't do this." Connor is shaking. He jams his hands under his armpits.

"It'll be fine," Laurel says. "You'll be okay."

Connor curls in tighter against the cold. "You'd better be right about this." Laurel nods. She knows she's wrong. Wes watches her carefully.

Lyla Bates steps out from the coffee shop across the street, wrapping her scarf tightly around her neck and pushing it into her coat. She passes under a yellow streetlight. Laurel shivers and pushes her hands farther into her pockets. "Last chance," she tells Wes.

He replies, "Not backing out now," but does not look at her. He watches Connor intently as he pushes his hair away from his face.

 

* * *

 

Upon reflection, she will find it is the most unfortunate of coincidences, or perhaps the luckiest.

For now, she is still.

"So you're Connor's friends," the woman says, smiling. "He's talked about all of you so much." Laurel can see the clench in Connor's jaw and knows this is a lie.

"What are you doing here?" he demands.

She takes a bite of hash browns off of his plate. "I was in town." She says it in a way that makes it very clear she was not in town. Studying her, Laurel can see the resemblance between her and Connor- the same intent set to their eyes, the same curve of their necks, the same arch of their eyebrows. His sister, most likely.

All of them watch her, this woman who has slipped into their corner booth with ease. Even Wes watches with wariness.

"Oh Connor," she says, "don't look at me like that."

"Like what?" he asks, a little angry, a little scared.

The soccer mom smile drops off her face so quickly it's as if it was never there. "I'm not the hunter-killer," she says quietly, loud enough for their entire table to hear but not loud enough that anyone else would. "You are."

The blood drains from Connor's face. "But the Keatings have always been too ambitious," she continues, as if she hasn't just condemned her brother, "not Annalise, no, though that was some nasty business with those possessions up in Vermont." She shakes her head. "I have no idea why she ever married into that family. The mother died last year, did you hear, some pancreatic cancer shit. The daughter - Sam's sister - is a bit of a loose cannon. I couldn't find too much on her, but watch out. She's coming for blood." She nods coolly at the rest of them and stands.

Connor grabs her wrist before she can leave. "You knew," he says flatly, "you knew the Keatings were hunters. You knew, and you sent me to them."

Her lips thin, the same way Connor's sometimes do. She sits back down, her gaze traveling over them once more. This time it feels more like the red dot of a laser. "Of course. They were meant to keep you safe." Her eyes zero in on Wes. "It wasn't supposed to turn into the adoption of a den of wolves."

Michaela chooses this moment to wave over a waitress. "Could we get the check?" she asks with a honey-thick smile.

Connor pulls down his collar. "Does this look like protection to you, Gemma?"

His sister tilts her head, studies the wound. Laurel reflexively rubs the identical one on her shoulder. A hurricane passes over Connor's sister's face. "Evidently there was a miscommunication." When she reaches for another bite of hash browns, Laurel sees calluses on her hands. "I'll need to speak to Annalise."

Laurel, somehow, gets stuck in Gemma's car, Connor riding shotgun. She never says a word for fear that Gemma will hear the death in her voice.

 

* * *

 

"How are the kids?" Connor asks.

"They're doing well," his sister answers, but Laurel does not miss the way her hands tighten on the steering wheel. "Riley made it onto the next level for soccer."

"That's good," Connor says, "that's good."

 

* * *

 

Wes does not know what killed his mother. He never will. He only knows that she left the house one night and never came back.

Officially, she is still missing. No bodies were ever found.

But he can narrow it down. Not someone like Connor, deadly in only one way. Not someone like Asher, without the need to feed. Not someone like Michaela, taking but not always ending. No, he knows it was someone of Laurel's ilk, fast and smart and as deadly as silver.

Twenty seven innocent. Bonnie's voice plays in his head like a broken record, over and over. Two hunters, one other. Twenty seven innocent.

Everyday, he sees the golden trophy, the balanced scales. He wonders: twenty seven guilty.

 

* * *

 

Riley has picked up archery without any nudging from her. She takes him to the range, watches him focus on the distant target and draw back his skinny arm. She and Connor had picked the basement lock when she was eleven. The first weapon she had taken off the wall had been a crossbow; Connor had taken a dagger.

Six years later, her little brother had taken her down to the same basement and placed a silver knife in her hands. "Don't worry," he had said, only thirteen, only terrified, "I know what has to happen.

Gemma has the same sort of basement in her house, though much more tightly secured.

This is thing about blood: it's like the postal service. Important stuff gets sent from one place to another as quickly as possible. It connects people. Sometimes there's anthrax involved. Sometimes letters get lost, or damaged, or stolen. Sometimes they're delivered to the wrong house. That is Connor: something misplaced in his creation, some small potential flexing its wings and taking flight, creating a disastrous storm. That potential in Connor- it runs in her veins, runs through the veins of her sons.

She calls him. He answers.

"You have to promise me," she says abruptly. "You'll - you will outlast me, if this Keating business isn't the death of you." They are two sides of the same coin: equal, but opposite. Connor does what he must to survive, avoiding trouble, but she actively seeks it, hunts it through forests and under streetlamps. And already she can see the gap between them widening; he is aging slower than she is. "Promise me you'll take care of them."

"Always," he says, steel in his voice, "of course." Sometimes she forgets he's more than capable of protecting himself, that he's nearly good with a knife as she is. A river of a thousand things unspoken runs between them.

She gets out of her car and walks into the house, praying that archery is the only thing that runs in Walsh blood.

 

* * *

 

"We had a deal," Gemma says. She knows the picture she makes, slightly sprawled in the chair, smooth jeans and smooth black vest.

"There were extenuating circumstances," Annalise says, "we had to take precautions."

"That poor girl was _strangled_ , and which one of your students does that? None of them, except perhaps for that fae boy if he's feeling vicious." Something flickers in her eyes, and Gemma remembers that this woman's husband is dead, dead and a murderer and a liar and a cheater. She would ask about the five, if it was just a dead girl that caused Annalise to choose them, or if something larger played into he decision, but she has enough trust in Connor to let him handle it.

"We still have a deal," Annalise says, "and I trust you will keep your end of it."

"Then keep my brother safe," she says, speaking both to Annalise and Bonnie, who stands behind Annalise's chair.

Gemma stands, and a prickling at the back of her neck is all the warning she has. She turns and pulls a knife in the same motion, finding herself ready to gouge out black eyes, slowly draining. "Back off," Keating orders, and the man, Frank, takes a step back.

Her, her dead husband, her lieutenant or second or whatever she is, and now this man who bleeds demon eyes? What the fuck is this, a fucking hunter coven?

Gemma points straight at Annalise Keating. "Connor is my brother," she says. "And I protect me and mine. If you pull something like this again, I will burn your house down with you in it."

Annalise is unmoved. "Tradition - law, even - dictates that you should have destroyed Connor the moment you knew. At the very least, you should have cut him off." Annalise couldn't possibly know, but she's hit the damn nail on the head, hit something deep and buried.

"Do I look like I give a fuck about tradition?" Gemma demands, walking out.

This is the thing about the postal service: it's going extinct.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i'm not really sure where this is going to end up or if i've kind of dug myself into a hole, plot wise. suggestions are welcome. will be eventually finished, i promise, even if it takes another season to get me motivated again.  
> bonus points will be given for suggestions and if you can figure out what mythical creatures/monsters each of them are  
> half a bonus point for telling me where the typos are because i'm really tired right now


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